The ‘Muslim insiders’ of the War on Terror

If love once lost turns into loathing, it’s true as much for ideas as romantic entanglements. The classic model is the young idealist who on the path to revolt strays from the barricades and becomes the night watchman of orthodoxy. Lord Macaulay observed in what is perhaps the most damning book review in the history of beautiful letters that the English poet Robert Southey swung from a zealous Jacobin fevered by the French Revolution to a zealous anti-Jacobin because he ran on zeal more than introspection.

There is a Muslim variation on the theme. A number of Islamic deserters have cropped up in the years since OBL made the marginal faith into a national question. They are former insiders, you understand, and like former communists David Horowitz and Irving Kristol whose baptism into the most hawkish nationalism has the feel of a Pravda caricature, we are supposed to lend credence to their fatwas because they have, in the common parlance, been there, done that. They are authentic.

In touchy political subjects that demand some measure of tact and careful handling, insiders are a useful ideological tool in the armor of the state, and with their highly prized Muslim biography, a number of them have become the brown face of the War on Terror.

The average Muslim renegade who has shed Islam is humane and decent. They wish to have no connection with this obscenity; but the average does not capture headlines. For that you need loud eccentrics with a sharp eye for controversy.

The pioneer of this sport is Ibn Warraq. He began his career before the onset of 9/11 as a rather lone detractor of Islam with some flash of sincerity. If a man wishes to bury the Divine, I will fetch my shovel. But if he was ever motivated by the good of Muslims, he’s long abandoned it for the lower precincts of right-wing polemic. It’s impossible to distinguish his work from the fire breathings and heart burnings of Likudniks.

It’s a long procession of antipathies hinged on the premise that Muslims resent America not because of the millions of them it has laid low by its international policy, but soley because their creed fosters hate against the tender hearted infidel apolitically who labors only for their own welfare.

To make the surly ingrates of Islam better admire the charms of modernity such as freedom of speech and worship, he proposes a referendum on boarding up all mosques in the West till the US-backed Saudi monarchy permits the construction of churches in the kingdom. Brandishing his civil libertarian credentials further still, he says we must outlaw the hijab and stop all Muslim immigration. It is not clear whether he thinks the ban on migration from Islamic states ought to extend to himself or whether he will, for the sake of practicing what he preaches, hop on the next flight back to Pakistan.

But if he is opposed to the Westward flow of Easterners, he is vocal in cheering the influx of Western armies to the Orient. As if to show that apostates can play the executioner’s role with the best of the Mecca boys, he says that, in the fashion of the ten year war in Afghanistan and the attack on Libya, we must pursue “regime change” in Iran to counter its threat against the West and its proxy war on Israel through Hizbollah, which one is informed is a “terrorist” outfit:

The fall of the Islamic Republic must be the primary foreign policy goal of all Western States, and when it comes will be the equivalent of the fall of the Soviet Union.

Is Obama seriously leaving open the option of using force, or is it more “let me make it clear” and “I am really serious this time” kind of pusillanimous rhetoric?

If you are disinclined to treat the Horowitz of the world as a reliable authority on socialism just because they had formerly been enchanted by it, you will observe why it is high folly to regard a Muslim turncoat who authors books like Defending The West and Why The West Is The Best as anything but a wartime propagandist. As a textbook case of how not to relate to one’s former community, his story holds much promise, but as political and social commentary, the less he says the more intelligent he appears.

Another specimen of this renegade theme is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She cultivates the posture of a women’s rights activist; very nice that; who could oppose such a worthy cause? But like the politician who claims to uphold family values and is caught mounting the babysitter, Hirsi Ali strives to prevent Muslim women escaping dire straits from seeking asylum in the West.

The womenfolk of Islam, she confides, are here to “outbreed” the white natives in just the manner Glenn Beck (on whose cable show our fair lady is a beloved guest) warns of the Mexican invasion poised to rob America from the gringo. With so many scheming foreigners out to get us, it’s enough to make a patriot grab his rifle and round them up.

For that we may count on the likes of Geert Wilders, an anti-immigrant nativist with whom Hirsi Ali worked cosily in the Dutch parliament to shut off the very immigration avenues which gave her a new shot at life. The migrants, one is told censoriously, claim to seek better economic prospects, but these serpentine Mohammedans really come to snatch away your ham and bacon sandwich and make your granny burka up.

Her utterances are nothing to marvel at. When your employer is the neoconservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, and your hubby is Niall Ferguson, a man who proudly crows “I’m a fully paid up member of the neo-imperialist gang”, your higher faculties can suffer a hemorrhage. Indeed, one may even begin to push for war against Iran as our humanitarian has taken to of late. We must crush Islam militarily and show those bad Mullahs up, she thuds, with no small relish. Since there is no such physical object called Islam to crush, the reality of this statement is crushing Muslims. And some of these people, I am told, happen to be women.

Perhaps my favourite plier of the trade though is the flamboyant Irshad Manji. A charmer by all accounts. But have a peek between the covers of her book, The Trouble With Islam Today, and what do you find? We learn that Arabs are the chief impediment to a peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the Israelis are the pinnacle of reason and moderation, a sentiment rehashed in her chummy CNN appearance with the Zionist Shmuley Boteach. And do you know why the World Trade Centre attacks occurred reader? Because the Arab hijackers, says she, were desperate to get laid and too scatterbrained to swing by a brothel. Suicide bombing has no relation to politics or conflict she writes, but is borne of the needy Arab man’s craving to bed heavenly nymphos.

And of course, there is no such thing as American imperialism because don’t you know that Muslims enjoy sending the fruit of their loins to America? And don’t let her catch you mouthing “Israeli Apartheid” within earshot: It is a Muslim invention because how can there be apartheid in the occupied territories when Arab politicians sit in the Knesset. And is it not proof enough that Westerners are morally superior to Muslims that both Israel and Pakistan were founded as independent states within a year apart and yet the former is a roaring democratic success and the latter a cleric infested backwater?

To the history buffs eager to trip our lass up, don’t bring up Reagan’s Cold War military aid to the Islamist strongman Zia Ul-Haq who did his level best to disembowel Pakistani secularism by incorporating Shariah into the legal system and establishing fundamentalist madrassas that have impeded the onward march of liberty and progress set rolling by its democratic secular founder Jinnah in a cynical move to dismember socialist movements across the frontiers of Asia; history is for losers.

The gaping omissions in fact and logic that mark the book from end to end are not too surprising given her preferred authorities on Islam is the Iraq war supporter Bernard Lewis who, when not lavishing confetti on Zionism, distinguishes himself by denying the Armenian genocide in tandem with official Israeli policy for which he was convicted by a French court, and the Muslim reviler Bat Ye’or known for churning out tomes presaging the looming Islamic takeover of Europe soon to be renamed “Eurabia”, with the clandestine aid of European statesmen full of white guilt. Instead of placing an urgent call to the bereft lunatic asylum from which Batty escaped, Manji describes the conspiracy theorist honorifically as an “Egyptian-born European scholar”.

Our writer likes to strike the pose of the Muslim dissident intrepidly facing down the clerical gang; to one like I who’s gone further and departed Islam altogether, I am less than staggered by her intellectual prowess; but unlike the truly brave work of Muslim feminists such as the former Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya, booted out for exposing the warlordism and corruption of Karzai’s administration, who takes majestic and habitual personal risks to oppose the lethal trio of Uncle Sam’s occupation, the fundamentalist warlords he brought to power, and the Taliban, Manji takes to the airwaves only to defend the war effort in unison with Hirsi Ali.

When you grace the studios of Fox News, for which our heroine is the resident Muslim philosopher, it is wise to know for whom to curtsy.

As you may have gathered by now, these Muslim insiders are little different in tone and texture from the outsiders we commonly know as neocons and chauvinists. The only difference being they enjoy the linguistic perk of commencing their public address with “As an ex-Muslim, I think …”

And almost invariably what these spinners of polemical fantasy think, to use a much disputed verb, just happens to align perfectly with the imperial needs of the Oval Office. Historically, the value of the iconoclast and the nonconformist has been to render novel and thoughtful insights into the afflictions of society that remain obscured; these media personalities only ever rekindle the most ancient European typecasts of the primitive Islamic savage in pressing need of Jane Austen’s tableside manners.

The heretical tradition is a noble one. Many disaffected minds have left our understanding deepened. What lends them plausibility however is not just their desertion, but the quality of information they have to relay and its consistency with our own perceptions of the true. There is a reason we invent separate moral categories for the disgruntled former employee and the public spirited whistleblower. Nothing is more unsightly than embittered intimates. Of such a bent are these recanted Muslims.

And a few others who confuse the unglamorous job of the reformer to work alongside insular racial minorities for progressive change with that of a media celebrity in rightwing circles which, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s free market ideology, seek to cut public services to empower women and the vulnerable.

Yet I don’t come just to cry down the synaptically defective. I wish to sing up the good in my fellows too. As surely as there are nonconformist Jewish writers like Phil Weiss and Adam Horowitz who play the renegado to Zionism without dubbing all of Judaism in sinister colours, there are many ex-Muslims who won’t try to sell you foolish wars in the name of fighting Islamo-Nazo-Commo-Homo-Fascism.

And in this connection I present for your reading pleasure the fine political activist and novelist Tariq Ali as well as the professor of political science who maintains the stimulating blog The Angry Arab, two dissenter minds of the better tradition which lays siege to the orthodoxies of both East and West.

About Theodore Sayeed

Theodore Sayeed is a contributor to Mondoweiss. He may be reached at: [email protected]

“”There was two kind of slaves. There was the house negro and the field negro. The house negro, they lived in the house, with master. They
dressed pretty good. They ate good, cause they ate his food, what he left.
They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near their
master, and they loved their master, more than their master loved
himself. They would give their life to save their masters house quicker
than their master would. The house negro, if the master said “we got a
good house here” the house negro say “yeah, we got a good house here”.
Whenever the master would said we, he’d say we. That’s how you can
tell a house negro. If the master’s house caught on fire, the house negro
would fight harder to put the blaze out than the master would. If the
master got sick, the house negro would say “What’s the matter, boss, we
sick?” We sick! He identified himself with his master, more than the
master identified with himself. And if you came to the house negro and
said “Let’s run away, Let’s escape, Let’s separate” the house negro would
look at you and say “Man, you crazy. What you mean separate? Where
is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than
this? Where can I eat better food than this?” There was that house
negro.

Okay, I want to apologize. I had a flash of anger and wrote before editing myself.

But here’s my objection:

What is being liberal? Clearly, being liberal is about being generous and having a mindset/a willingness to sacrifice–at least a little.

Do you really think I should have nothing to fear about Islam as it’s currently practiced by many when in Muslim-dominated lands Christians are getting murdered?

That’s very . . . very conservative of you to think that way. So my challenge to you is to look at things from (what would be, relative to your perspective) a truly liberal way.

And, hey, I’ll admit I do have fears about the institutional Jewish community: Because I think it’s fairly obvious that many Jewish leaders are, in fact, putting their interests over the interests of all Americans. They’re behaving in a conservative fashion. They’re behaving tribally.

HRK, it’s very rational to be very afraid of Establishment Muslims, Christians, and Jews, and, of course, especially afraid of each group of true believers in countries where they have the most political power.

Good thing there’s a growing number of secular Muslims, Christians, and Jews. Or is there?

I make it plain that I deplore the “Islamist” direction states like Pakistan have taken by “incorporating Shariah into the legal system” against the democratic vision of its founder , that I root for the “Muslim feminist” Malalai Joya in her campaign against the “fundamentalist warlords” in her country, that I recommend the work of ex-Muslims like Tariq Ali and As’ad Abu Khalil who attack the “orthodoxies of the East”, and that I am myself a former Muslim who rejects Islamic theology. My stand is clear.

I agree with all your points, except I don’t believe that the rejection of Islam is a factor in looking at the world anew with more humane eyes. Many Muslim believers would be critical of how the Shariah was incorporated into the legal system. Muhammad Abduh would have condemned the dictator Zia and the charlatan Maududi who inspired those oppressive reforms. Asma Barlas, a believing Muslim scholar and a woman who fled persecution, has described that form of interpretation of Islam as “blasphemous”. I myself attack the “orthodoxies of the East and West” and believe in the pursuit of knowledge and human equality and good treatment of animals, but am a believer. Also another point to consider is that belief cannot be measured, for most people faith is an embodied practice. Secularism in the West is also a form of embodied practice. Lack of ethics and oppression are rooted not in “Islamic theology” but in the cult of certain thinkers which are challenged by many of us. It boils down to the thinkers doing the thinking. A great book on the subject of Muslim attitudes is Inside Muslim Minds by the sociologist Riaz Hassan. It is critical of contemporary Muslim life and very interesting.

HRK, you might want to check out the sociologist Riaz Hassan’s Inside Muslim Minds. Not a fan of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, both these countries are locus of bad ethics are influenced by the wrong sort of theologians. Saudi Arabia’s whole interpretation of theology is a cynical ploy to garner legitimacy of the regime, even if that means manipulation the Qur’an and adding the voice of the establishment to the footnotes.

Muhammad Asad’s This Law of Ours criticises piety for dead scholars and asks Muslims to think independently, putting into use historical, psychological and scientific gains. Not going to make an excuse, there’s a huge uphill struggle ahead for the next generation of right-minded Muslim ethicists. In many ways this will be like intellectually and morally challenging whole systems and states.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a serial liar who fabricated her entire life history. She lost her job as MP in Dutch parliament when this trail of fraud was uncovered. She is married to Niall Ferguson, a British Neocon smart-aleck who can now fend off charges of racism by pointing at the Africa-born woman by his side. Sounds like a charming power couple that will stop at nothing to amass more money and power. I see no reason to regard her as an authority on, say, the lives and culture of a fifth of humanity any more than the hotel maid who tried to plant a rape charge on Dominique Strauss-Kahn last year to live out a comfortable life.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a hero for freedom and human dignity. Her life story is truly inspiring. I suggest for all to read her book “Infidel” before judging her. I’m surprised that you didn’t mention Mosab Hassan Yousef, “Son of Hamas”. Another revolutionary figure for human dignity and human freedom.

Colin, it’s clear that Curveball was taken seriously by our opportunistic neocons and variety of other 5th Column Israel Firster think tanks. We don’t need more of him, for sure. Yet they are popping out of the woodwork now, full-tilt for war on Iran.

Oh boy, here we go again. Ayaan, Wilders, Van Gogh, … the wild bunch that poked up the Netherlands with islamfobia after 9/11. It will probably take half a generation to neutralize the damage.

Check out the ‘movies’ Submission and Fitna to get some idea of their mission to create an incredible division in Dutch/Western society, portraying muslims as devils on their way to take over our lives, wipe out our culture and lock up our women. What was that supposed to mean? Why should you uproot a peaceful place like the Netherlands?

The answer came reading ‘The Ethnical Cleansing of Palestine’ by Pappe. He reports the Israeli campaign of ‘islam-bashing’, launched in 2002. These days we’ve heard Netanyahu thank his gods for sending him 9/11. Israel succeeded, the Lobby succeeded, and they gave us Ayaan en Wilders.

Ayaan, spending her time in parliament writing angry books and making int’l appearences, and Wilders being fed suitcases full of cash dollars from the US (litterally being carried right into our parliament). Ayaan is gone, after it turned out she had lied coming into Holland as a refugee (a fact she accused other immigrants of). Wilders had his year of fame, but is out of power now (and forever), his party crumbling.

They left a big mess behind, mostly serving someone else’s agenda. Slowly Holland is beginning to recover as a society, but as per the Shock Doctrine the damage is bigger than that. Who would have predicted that the Dutch would one day be carrying an ID and be registered in every thinkable database — unthinkable since 1945, but a fact today. Thanks, guys.

So Sassan, take care. Naming Ayaan a ‘revolutionary figure’ could materialize before you know, leaving you bewildered in your own country.

Okay, I refuse to comment on posts on here any longer as my sensible posts in which I put time into in which I did not resort to any ad hominems or personal attacks were simply ignored and not posted (deleted). This is called censorship for no reason other than my point of view. Nice knowing you all (if this is even posted at all).

All I had posted was that instead of attacking figures like Ayaan and Theo van Gogh, why not ask yourselves why someone like Mr. van Gogh had to be slaughtered in broad daylight with a note attached to his body for Ayaan? Why is it that Islamic fascism reared its ugly head once again? And why omit the facts such as Ayaan had never lied to Parliament as to the reason why she had to be disingenuous in her asylum application so that she wouldn’t be forced back to Kenya in which she would have been forced back to the arranged marriage she was running away from? Ayaan’s story is not only a human story but an intellectual journey from superstition to reason. And one must not put down people like Ayaan or Mr. Wilders for speaking the truth against the policies of multiculturalism which have only encouraged further self-segregation instead of assimilation. Anyhow, when I had spent time typing out a detailed post and to see it deleted just because of the point of view is not a nice thing to do. It makes me not want to write any more long and detailed posts. If the admin of the site doesn’t want me to post (or others with other views) just please let me know next time and I will oblige.

Excellent post, phenomenal insight, I do not see what has upset those who seem incensed by your read of the Zionist infested political landscape in America and those who curry the favor of the newly landed elite.

Theodore Sayeed deserves more than a thank you. If I were king, I’d make him chief adviser on foreign policy. Unfortunately, today, the kingdom is murky, buried behind its AIPAC cash and moat of Shoah ash.

“Okay, Theodore, but when all is said and done: What about Christian persecution at the hands of Muslims? WHAT ABOUT THAT????!!!!!!”

Is it a snark on the theme of whataboutery, or a genuine article? As long as it looks like a snark, I will leave it alone.

A realization that “all you believed is wrong” may lead to modest justified adjustment in mental outlook, but it can start a long slide to the nether reaches of the soul. Suppose that you are a Batman fan. One they you realize what miserable and phony lot Batman fans are. Show them a supervillain and they will defecate without removing their underwear. And you can show them that, oh, you will show them! First you collect costume parts, guns and ammo.

I’d also like to recommend the Lebanese writer Gilbert Achcar for his balance and integrity. In his book “The Clash of Barbarisms” he analyzes the symbiosis between Islamist and Western barbarism. Another very important book of his is “The Arabs and the Holocaust.”

It is well established that Hirsi Ali in the Netherlands did only “free” exactly one woman. When she left the country, with post-parliament pay, she had not gathered any women (or women’s rights advocate) around her. None.

There are those who truly hate Muslims based on their religion/ethnicity. They are useful props for those who wish to sanitize their views, delousing their hate with a patina of multiculturalism. They can then dissect Islam, determining good Muslim from the species of bad Muslim.

Perhaps a faint echo from dissecting Jews from the Good Jew or American of Mosaic Descent from the Bad Jew who is also subdivided amongst subspecies. The good Jew realizes the racism of his own religion and speaks truth to power, often the applause of Jew baiters and Jew haters everywhere, for how can they be guilty of anti-semitism if some of their best friends are Jews.

Glen Beck will host useful idiot A or Good Muslim. Veterans Today will host useful B or Good Jew.

Sometime you’re a prophet, but sometimes your just a dupe. In his heart of hearts, I doubt Glen Beck is any happier with Hirsi Ali as Walt or Mersheimer are with MJ Rosenberg. Just a hunch=)

For a renegade Jewish American analogous to Hirsi Ali you should refer to Adam Gadahn, also known as Adam al-Amreeki, the Al-Qaeda English language public relations manager.

There is a difference between the dissidents and revolutionaries who take risks to transform their societies, and those who go off the deep end and align with those who are blindly and murderously at war with their own societies.

The renegade Muslims who appear on the neo-con howler monkey talk show circuit and parrot the crudest propaganda of those who would harm their families are also notorious for being frauds. Hirsi Ali is not the only dissembler. Liberty University (i.e. Jerry Falwell’s schtick) was embarrassed when the Ergun Caner, the ex-Muslim-with-a-dramatic-story they had hired as Dean turned out to be a fraud. The former jihadist terrorist from Bethlehem – his name slips my mind at the moment – also has been exposed as having a fabricated past. I’d actually enjoy they way they swindle American war mongers if their acts were less harmful.

There is also Wafa Sultan, beloved of MEMRI, who did her share in denigrating Islam after 9/11, and was voted one of 100 most influential people by times magazine. Her connection with Pamela Geller is not a coincidence.

RE: “Lord Macaulay observed…that the English poet Robert Southey swung from a zealous Jacobin fevered by the French Revolution to a zealous anti-Jacobin because he ran on zeal more than introspection.” ~ Theodore Sayeed

MY COMMENT: Robert Southey’s 180 degree swing reminds me of a similar 180 degree swing on the part of Norman Podhoretz and the neocons. I guess zealots will always be zealots!“Sticks and stones may break our bones, but facts will never
sway us!” ~ Neocon Creed

Theodore Sayeed, the vast majority of people killed by Takfiri extremists are muslim.

Are the 650,000 Iraqi Security Forces traitors to Islam and their own country? Are the 195 thousand Afghan National Army traitors to Islam? Are the Turks (anti Al Qaeda as they are) traitors to Islam? When the new democratically elected Tunisian government blasts Al Qaeda, are they traitors to Islam? Are Indian muslims who blast Al Qaeda traitors to Islam?

Some Europeans and Americans believe that it is best to let the Islamic “civil war” play out. Best to let them “kill each other”, maybe in the millions or tens of millions. Perhaps you agree with them Theodore Sayeed. But if you take sides in Islam’s “civil war” and criticize muslims you happen to disagree with . . . then expect serious push back.

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